When the Canadian artist Steve McDonald decided to move with his family to the paradise island of Bali, Indonesia about three years ago, he never fully considered the consequences of leave a traditional art gallery and to have a list of clients dedicated to his works. What's even more surprising is that he had no idea that it would lead him to start creating art for other people to color them.
He has exhibited his work throughout the country, and has expanded to the entire world thanks to amazon. Many of his paintings have ended up in some of the most respected corporate and private collections. But now he faced a tougher challenge in finding a way to show his art to a new audience in a remote part of the world.
As McDonald, the solution was partly fate and partly the decision to change the way he painted.
My work became less and less pictorial, and what I really liked to do was draw. I began to be less concerned with the color of my works and more concerned with shape and line. The idea to produce an adult coloring book came from those around him, McDonald says.
I've always considered myself a closet architect, and as work started to get more and more linear, I started to stop giving my works color. So I started getting more and more suggestions from fellow artists, clients, and even my own daughters where the work I did could be really great in color.
He decided to embark on a coloring book project where he produced artistic outlines of well-known cities around the world. From Stockholm to New York, the drawings are replicated with outstanding monuments and dwellings in known sections of the city. McDonald's has visited many of these places, but most of the drawings are based on high resolution images taken by established and renowned photographers.
His vision was immediately of interest to a number of well established publishing companies. The Adult Coloring Book Market has skyrocketed in the last couple of years and many outlets were looking for new ideas and innovative content.
McDonald was contacted by a San Francisco-based publisher, and eventually his first book titled 'Fantastic Cities'.
The choice of publisher made sense to McDonald. This publisher had a proven track record for large design and print projects. innovative publications. They also had a very cool vibe that seemed like a perfect fit for coloring books.
'Fantastic Cities' has 58 pages of illustrations and is aimed at anyone who has a passion for architecture and detailed coloring. The first roll is close to 400.000 copies and has been published in more than 22 countries. McDonald says he's not surprised by the success of adult coloring books.
It is a drug to expand creativity with these coloring books. People talk about how therapeutic it is, which reduces stress. I don't think this is specifically coloring books, I think it is any resemblance to any creative activity.
Back home in believemore after two years in Bali, McDonald and the San Francisco publisher have plans, and already has put out more additional books in these years.
One of the nice things about the work I'm doing for the coloring book is that it's the same as it was before, only they are bound in a different way. I'm doing the same thing I'd be doing anyway, so it's a beautiful little surprise to me that the book has been so successful so far.
If you want to expand your creativity I leave you the link for amazon to be able to buy the books he's published, and they're not expensive at all. Click on the following link to see them.